Rhythm abounds: Kathak danseuse Sanjukta Wagh on the influences on her art

R Umamaheshwari

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning black American poet Gwendolyn Brooks is among her many inspirations in life and art. Several layers to her persona and practice came gushing out like a river in exuberant flow during our conversation one sun-lit evening at the Jagori rural charitable trust premises in Rakkad village in Dharamsala, where she was partaking of a yoga retreat (conducted by dancer Navtej Johar). She is Sanjukta Wagh, a kathak dancer-singer-storyteller, one of the founders of the Beej School of Kathak, established in 2005 in Mumbai.

At Beej, they do several things around performing arts, such as alternative approaches to pedagogy of music and the creative process, as also around dance culture. “It has three components. The Beej Garage pulls things apart and puts them back together again! The Beej School of Kathak is dedicated to finding new ways of classical dance and training. The Beej Dance Company makes collaborative performances, mostly with live musicians,” she says.

Among many of Sanjukta’s creations is the fascinating interplay of the kathak bol with Brooks’ poem. Thus:

We, real cool,

takka takkita, taka takita, taka takita,

We, left school,

takka takkita, taka takita, taka takita

We, lurk late

takka takkita, taka takita, taka takita

We, strike straight,

takka takkita, taka takita, taka takita… (And so on)

Sanjukta studied kathak with Rajashree Shirke for 22 years before starting out on her own. Her stint at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (UK) in 2009 and 2010, with the support of the British Council’s Charles Wallace Trust scholarship, was “an eye-opener in many senses; my kathak became boundless”, she says. “I had to unlearn my indoctrinated kathak body… but I also realised the value of kathak. It became the language I wanted to speak in. My work on Kabir had started in 2006 with my first project called ‘Akat Katha’. My second Kabir project was ‘Bheetar Bahar’. The third one is called ‘Jheeni’.” The journey with Kabir has deepened over the years.

“We can dance to anything,” says Sanjukta, who did a project on the African-American poet Ntozake Shange while she was pursuing her MA literature. In what Shange calls a choreo-poem, titled ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf’, she talks about the coloured women’s experiences in the US. Sanjukta says she hasn’t ever had a visceral experience like what she felt when reading the poem. “This character called Lady in Red jumps out at me and says, ‘Dance me now!’ I seated ‘Passion Flower of Southwest Los Angeles’ in Benaras, doing kathak on a sarangi track by Sultan Khan. It was the most liberating experience,” she recounts.

That is when Sanjukta also found her nayika. “Shange talks about this wholly sensuous woman who has orange butterflies and aqua sequins painted over her body. She shows her thigh and walks the streets of Los Angeles and every man’s head turns. She knows she is being looked at, desired. In the night, she has one man come to her house. At 4 am, she wakes up, has a bath and removes all the shringar. She plaits her hair and says to him, ‘You may go now!’ Men are surprised. They have been so dazzled by her beauty and now she is this normal coloured girl — ‘Now she stood there, regular colored girl.’ The woman writes of this exploit in her diary and cries herself to sleep.” Sanjukta says it woke up something in her. “When I was performing her, I did not know that I was channelling the tawaif who absolutely knows her art, but is also crying herself to sleep…”

Kathak, as the soil of this country, she says, is multi-faith. “It is the soil of Kabir, Khusro and Bulleh Shah, who have risen from the ashes. I do ‘Hori kheloongi keh keh bismilllah’. And I also need to reclaim ‘Aiso Ram’, and poets like Nazeer Akbarabadi, who wrote about Ram. I will celebrate ‘Aa kalandar kesava’ and Kabir. I performed Shah Husain, the 16th century Sufi from Lahore who was in love with a Hindu boy, Madho Lal. We performed an entire evening on Madho Lal-Husain in Mumbai and Delhi. We start with Lahore, where every year an urs is celebrated in the name of love, which was started by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.”

Sanjukta says Shah Husain speaks of the collective women’s voice, seeking the beloved, when he says: ‘Buriyan, buriyan, buriyan, assi buriyan ve lokan, buriyan kol na hove…’ “[And he goes on to say that] Sharper than the swords you hurl at us is the arrow of separation! In a tradition of such voices, who have been radical across time, our path is well-laid. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. That is the path of the artist. Apne aap ko mita do and then see what arises,” she beckons.